Ghosts from the Past
by Darrell Till
Summary: The Eleventh Doctor, along with newly-weds Amy and Rory, is dragged to a mysterious, uncharted planet. As they investigate the seemingly dead world, Amy battles with ghosts from her past, but soon the Doctor also finds himself battling with unseen forces - is this world as lifeless as it seems?


Amy woke suddenly, sharply taking in one desperate breath and feeling relief like someone bursting up from deep water into sunlight. Waking onboard the TARDIS was always this way for her, as her sleep was deep. The sleeping quarters were a little clinical, but she found the neutral colours and ambient temperature relaxing, and the distant hum of the engines provided a white noise that actually seemed to induce sleep. The oddly-shaped Gallifreyan beds were unexpectedly comfortable too. At first glance they seemed a little like hospital beds - not flat, but slightly s-shaped, fitting to the contours of the spine. They folded into the wall when not in use, and although they felt unusual, Amy found falling asleep was no problem at all, yet she still always woke with a start. For a while she put it down to years of sleeping next to that crack in the wall, but that story had come to an end, and now there were new disquieting thoughts that played on her mind, especially while she slept.

The sleeping quarters the Doctor had assigned to her and Rory were larger than the ones she had rested in while travelling alone with him. Of course, they were the same quarters, after some Timelord engineering. That annoyed Amy - knowing that she could have had a bigger room in the first place.

Rory lay sleeping next to her, still deep under, his face a picture of calm. No night terrors for him. Amy looked at him for a moment, the man she had just married, and the feelings of guilt that had been plaguing her returned. She tried to think of something else so she could go back to sleep. She thought about the bed, and tried to imagine herself sinking into it. Sinking into the comfy bed. The comfy, folding bed.

* * *

She found the Doctor in the console room, tinkering with something that didn't look like it needed tinkering with.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor met her eyes but his hands continued tinkering. "Amy Pond. What are you doing up? It's the middle of the night. Well, it's the middle of space. Much the same, really. Dark and cold."

"The beds in the sleeping quarters. Why do they fold into the wall?"

"Space saving. I thought that would have been obvious. Haven't you ever been to IKEA?"

"Yes, but this is a TARDIS. It's bigger on the inside. When Rory moved in you just pressed some buttons and suddenly the room was bigger. You don't need to save space - you _make_ space!"

"Listen, just because I can make more space doesn't mean I should go around wasting it. People who make a lot of money quickly become poor if they're wasteful."

As always, the Doctor's words seemed to Amy to be as wise as they were insane, but before she was able to digest them fully, the TARDIS lurched suddenly, like a cat leaping from a crouch position, causing Amy and the Doctor to stumble, and unleashing all manner of alarms upon them.

"What was that?" Amy's voice trembled.

The Doctor grabbed the console and studied its many instruments.

"This can't be right - we were in a temporal orbit, but now we're moving."

Rory appeared, running onto the bridge. Nobody could have slept through the discordant cacophony of warning sounds that were now ringing throughout the TARDIS, not even Rory. "What's going on?" he appealed.

"I already asked that and didn't get much sense out of him," replied Amy to her bleary-eyed husband.

"We're going down," declared the Doctor, in his typical matter-of-fact-whilst-facing-grave-danger manner.

"Down? Down where? I thought we were in deep space? In a temporary thingy?"

"Temporal orbit. And I don't know what we're heading towards. Something big. Planet-sized."

"_Planet-sized_?"

"A _planet_, hopefully! Hold on to something, this might be a bumpy landing."

Amy and Rory held onto the console room gantry, and onto each other. After an intense few seconds during which the Doctor ran around the console while the TARDIS shook violently, the cacophony of sounds finally concluded with the familiar screeching before all the unnerving noises retreated, leaving only that comforting hum.

* * *

The Doctor stepped out of the door first, followed by Amy and Rory, and together they took their first breaths on this alien world. The air was clean and pure, but the landscape was desolate. Cliff-faces rose and fell, mountains tumbled in the distance, but there was no greenery at all. Everything, as far as the eye could see, was grey. It felt as lifeless as an empty grave.

The Doctor stared at the sonic screwdriver he had been waving around while Amy had assessed the planet. "As I thought. Traces of Artron energy. That must be what pulled the TARDIS here."

"Is that good?" enquired Amy.

"In a way, yes," the Doctor replied. "Artron energy originates in the time vortex, it's what my people have been using as a power source for millennia and it's what powers the TARDIS. So the good news is we've just accidentally refuelled. But it raises some questions. Why is there Artron Energy on this planet? It leaks into a few places around the universe through cracks and wormholes but the Timelords know about most of those. This planet isn't even on any charts - it shouldn't exist. So where are we?"

"If this energy isn't found here naturally, could someone have brought it here?" asked Rory.

"That would be one possibility,'' replied the Doctor, "if the planet wasn't completely and utterly dead. There isn't any life here at all."

"I could have told you that without waving a stick around." chimed Amy.

"It's not a stick, Amy, it's a sonic screwdriver. And I don't just mean there isn't any intelligent life, I mean there's literally nothing. There's no plant life. No bacteria. Not even that nice bacteria you get in yogurt."

"I have one question,'' interjected Rory. "If there's no life here, then who built those?"

The Doctor and Amy silently spun around to look where Rory was pointing. It took a moment to see it against all the grey, but once you saw it you couldn't unsee it. A cluster of monoliths stood in the distance, their obviously geometric shapes a testimony to design and intelligence, belying all that the Doctor had said about this planet. The three looked at each other, and without a word they began their walk towards them.

* * *

"Why didn't you wake me this morning?" Rory asked Amy.

The Doctor was marching ahead of the couple, still waving his sonic around and repeatedly checking it, like someone repeatedly dialing a constantly engaged phone number hoping to get a different result.

Amy had heard her husband perfectly well but was not particularly ready to answer his question. She managed an "Hmm?"

"I woke up without you again. Why don't you ever wait around for me?"

"Look, I've told you already - there's no need for you to be jealous of the Doctor."

"I'm not jealous. It's not that you left me to talk to him, it's just that you left me. Like you do every morning we wake up, whether we are on the TARDIS or at home. We've been married for months and I don't think I've actually woken up next to my wife once."

"I can't help it if you're a heavy sleeper."

"I'm not a heavy sleeper! Look, I'm worried that something is on your mind and you're not talking to me about it. You're shutting me out."

"I'm not shutting you out… I just find it hard to explain how I've been feeling."

"Please try. I'm your husband."

"I feel… guilty."

"Guilty? Over what?"

"Getting married, I guess."

Rory looked hurt. "I didn't force you to marry me. If you didn't really want to, then…"

"Shut up! I wanted to marry you. I said this was difficult to explain."

"Sorry. I'm listening."

Amy's shoulders fell as she let her guard down a little. "Look, I lost my parents to that crack in my wall when I was 7 years old. All that time, without a proper family. Then, suddenly, they're back. On my wedding day they just blinked back into existence."

"But that was an amazing thing to happen. You had your mum and dad at your wedding."

"I know, but don't you see? On the same day my parents were returned to me, I left them again. I guess that's why I feel guilty."

Rory pondered his response to Amy, but before he could begin to assemble his thoughts, the Doctor stopped walking and the couple no longer had their privacy. The three travellers stood and gazed at the monolithic construction before them. A collection of stones arrayed in a circle, not dissimilar to Earth's Stonehenge, but perfectly geometric in shape. Now only a hundred or so yards away it was clear that this had been built by someone. And it seemed more than just a folly - it appeared purposeful.

"Doctor," whispered Amy, "are you completely sure there is no life here? Because that totally looks like it was made by something alive."

"I'm as sure as I can be. Back at the TARDIS I was able to quickly scan the whole planet, and I've been taking supplementary readings with the sonic along the way. There's definitely no life here. Not anymore at least."

Then they saw it. It wasn't visible from the distance, but as they entered between the first of the stone artefacts there before them was an entrance in the floor. Steps led down into a carefully constructed building beneath the ground. Despite being hewn from cold, lifeless stone, the subterranean edifice screamed intelligent life. The peculiar juxtaposition of life and lifelessness made it all the more unsettling. Again, without a word, the three began a slow trudge down the steps into the belly of the dead world.

* * *

A field of lush, green grass rippled in the freshest of breezes. The perfectly pinstriped blades licked gently at the base of the blue box that stood amidst it. Life on this luxuriant planet had been superabundant for aeons, but now that was changing. Many of its highest forms of intelligence were long gone, and the rest were dying too, as the two lifeforms who had just arrived were about to discover.

"There's nowt here," commented Lucie Miller with her Northern English vernacular.

"Is that your professional opinion?" quipped the Doctor, stepping out of his TARDIS behind his companion. Now well into his eighth life, he had grown a little impatient but was no less playful.

"Yes, actually. Just look at it - it's deader than Blackpool on a rainy Sunday morning."

"Not dead, Lucie. But it is dying."

"Dead, dying, what's the difference?"

"The difference is hope. Dying I can do something about. Dead, not so much."

"Unless you're a Timelord."

The Doctor smarted a little. Life was of the greatest importance to him, and his people had worked to cheat death at almost all costs. But he knew that this was not a gift shared by others, and he did not like to be reminded of his ability to regenerate by someone who cannot. It gave him a feeling of guilt, knowing that he could evade the sting of death while for others he could at best postpone it.

"So," continued Lucie, "why is this planet dying?"

"I don't know yet. It could be something to do with the Artron energy that pulled us here. Radiation is not exactly conducive to life."

"There's radiation here? Is it safe for us?"

"Perfectly safe. I'm only detecting residual energy now. The TARDIS absorbed most of it. But I fear the damage to the planet may already have been done."

Lucie continued surveying the scenery. "It's not fair, is it. Death, I mean. Some people say it's just a part of life, but it's not. It's the exact opposite of life."

"A very astute observation, Lucie Miller. Death is the enemy of life. That's why we fight it. But sooner or later the day comes when we have to embrace it as a friend."

"Maybe it was just this planet's time then."

"Maybe, but maybe not. If it's the latter then we're going to help it fight."

* * *

"You know what these steps mean?" The Doctor examined the stone walls as they descended, which were, so far at least, completely without markings.

"What do these steps mean?" Rory responded to the Doctor's prompt.

"Whoever built this place… had legs."

Amy sniggered at the seemingly ridiculous observation.

"You might laugh, Amy Pond, but when I'm heading down an enormous flight of dark, stone steps into a seemingly dead planet and I don't really know what might be waiting for me at the bottom, I find it reassuring to know that it will be a walking something and not a floaty, flying something. I hate the floaty flying ones."

The sonic was doubling as a makeshift torch, emitting only just enough green light to descend the steps safely. Their field of vision was limited to a dozen or so steps in front of them, and the same behind, which Amy and Rory frequently checked. The Doctor pressed forward, unconcerned with what they were leaving behind. Rory took the opportunity to continue the conversation with his wife.

"You needn't feel guilty about leaving your parents," Rory reassured, "they were so happy at our wedding. And it's not like you've left them anyway. We still see them, when we're not… doing crazy stuff like this. In any case, they don't remember falling into the crack. As far as they're concerned, they never missed out on your childhood."

"But _I_ remember, and _I _missed out. And despite that, I still wanted to marry you and leave them behind while we do this kind of thing with the Doctor. I suppose I feel like I've turned my back on my family."

"_I'm_ your family too, you know."

"You know what I mean."

Rory concluded that this wasn't a good time to deal with this and withdrew from the discussion. They continued their descent in silence for only a little while longer before their field of vision abruptly changed to reveal a flat surface. They had reached the bottom.

As they touched the final step, it seemed as if their presence triggered the lights. What looked like sedimentary rocks set into the walls of a giant, cavernous room began to glow, enabling them to see the enormity of what they'd discovered. An immense underground chamber, hewn out of rock, yet a perfect dome; and in the middle of it stood some kind of colossal machine. It consisted of what looked like stone tracks, with huge pieces that resembled many of the geometric shapes they saw above ground and which were clearly meant to move. The mysterious apparatus stood as silent and lifeless as everything else they'd encountered on this world.

"What is it?" asked Rory. He was whispering, but his voice still echoed around.

"I don't know,'' replied the Doctor, his childlike curiosity piqued and the sonic already buzzing. "Some kind of generator, perhaps?"

"Could this be what generated the energy that pulled us in?"

"No. You can't generate Artron energy, you can only harness it. I don't even think this machine even employs energy to run. It looks like some sort of perpetual motion machine."

"Perpetual motion?" lilted Amy.

"A machine that powers itself using the energy it generates. Like a Newton's Cradle - you know, those little swinging ball toys that important people used to have on their desks. It doesn't need any power, it never runs out of power, it just runs forever. Except this one has stopped."

As they walked closer to it an opening in the machine's base became visible. It was clearly possible to enter this machine.

"So we're going inside?" wondered Rory, suspecting that he already knew the answer to his question. The answer was never spoken out loud, and once again the three silently agreed to enter the opening, as if the quietude of this world was infectious.

* * *

"You think this machine is powering the planet?" Lucie asked her Doctor.

As they stood beneath the huge apparatus they'd discovered, huge stones whizzed around overhead in a carefully choreographed ballet. It was incredible to witness - a genius feat of engineering that moved almost silently. No rumbling of clumsy mechanics, just the swooshing of air around it as the huge stone pieces moved. It looked like an orrery of no solar system that anyone could dream up.

"I think it's more than that, Lucie," opined the Doctor. "I believe the operation of this machine is intrinsically linked to the life on this planet. I don't know who built it, or what it does exactly... but just as life on other worlds depends on a number of conditions being exactly right and in perfect balance, life on this world somehow depends on this machine."

"So why is the planet dying?"

"Because the machine is slowing down. It isn't visible to the eye, but my scans of the machine indicate that the rate of its deceleration is exactly the same as the rate of decay everywhere else on the planet. I believe that if we can stop the machine from slowing down we might be able to reverse the planet's fate."

* * *

"How can you hope to figure out these controls when there are no symbols?" enquired Amy.

"Because,'' responded the Doctor, "whoever built this used the most universal language there is - mathematics".

Inside the machine, they found what was clearly a control panel. Like the machine itself, the panel was constructed completely from stone. It was perfectly cut, with smooth surfaces and raised sections that were also perfect geometrical shapes and looked like they functioned as switches and buttons. Coloured sections appeared to be made from different minerals. The very idea of a stone-age computer was a paradoxical as everything else on this world.

The Doctor closely studied the array of different shaped switches, counting them and their sides, looking for a pattern in their arrangement. "It appears to follow a basic quinary system," he declared. "Assuming that the present configuration is what stopped the machine, all I need to do is arrange the switches in the precise, mathematical opposite to how we found it."

The Doctor moved switches around, looking up and down the neolithic keyboard as he calculated the new ordering.

"So, you think that if you restart the machine it will bring this planet back to life?" Amy enquired.

"Hope so, yes."

"And the people that built it?"

"Long gone. And it may be quite some time before that kind of life comes back to the planet. There - that's it." The Doctor finished with the switches and stood back to inspect his work.

"I don't hear anything happening", Rory pointed out.

"No," agreed the Doctor, "there must be some kind of master reset switch… like… like that massive stone slab right there."

Next to the console, sticking out of the wall so obviously they shouldn't have missed it, was the master switch. It was as big as the bricks that built the Great Pyramids and looked like it was meant to slide all the way into the wall.

The Doctor put all of his weight against the slablike stone switch and attempted to push. It wasn't easy to move and it took several shoves, but eventually it was fully depressed.

The Doctor stepped back to be at the side of his companions and looked admiringly at his efforts. His delight was momentary though, as they watched the stone slowly slide back out again.

"That's odd,'' mused the Doctor. "Must be a reset."

He returned to the switch and prepared to push it again. "I might need some help this time Rory."

The two men both leaned against the stone and pushed. Halfway in, they felt the resistance. Pushing with their whole strength together they were able to see it all the way in, but the moment they stepped back it slid back out again.

"Why does it feel like we're fighting somebody with this?" Rory queried.

"Because whatever is pushing it back out again isn't a constant force or some machine action,'' answered the Doctor, again unhesitatingly reaching for the sonic, "it feels like it's being pushed from the other side. Except there is no other side."

"You're definitely sure there is nothing living on this planet?" Amy checked. "There might not be any floaty things, but what about _invisible_ things?".

"I'm quite sure that nobody is here with us," the Doctor reassured.

The Doctor lurched at the switch one more time as if trying to take it by surprise. It slid in without any trouble. Seconds later, it slowly slid back out again. Even the way that it moved, juddering back out rather than smoothly returning to its original place, looked like the work of a person, not a machine.

"But," pondered the Doctor, "what if there is someone else, not here in this place, but here in another time?"

The married couple stared at him for a moment.

"Doctor," began Rory, "I don't claim to understand time travel the way you do… but if someone was here in a different time, that could only be before we were here, or after we were here. How can someone be here now, pushing this stone, but not be with us in this time?"

"You know it's excellent questions like this that make me glad you came along with us, Rory."

The Doctor became visibly more animated as he prepared to deliver his explanation, pumped up by his own brilliance and the chance to share it with others.

"Because," continued the Doctor, markedly louder than before, "I'm of the opinion that time doesn't work here the way it does in most places. We only found this planet because I took the TARDIS back over its own timestream. This planet doesn't exist in normal space and time. And the traces of Artron energy - the only place that comes from is the time vortex, or something that leaks into it, but there are no rifts or wormholes here, so it has to be some kind of space-time anomaly I've never seen before."

Seconds later, the Doctor was gazing at something else he had never seen before.

* * *

Lucie was visibly disturbed by the stone switch that moved by itself. The colour had drained from her face. It only fascinated the Doctor, however.

"I think this place exists outside of normal time," stated the Doctor. "Time here isn't linear, it's… cyclical. The entire lifecycle of a planet held in a moment of time, like a pocket universe. When we travelled back on ourself we fell backwards into it! And that means whatever is here with us, fighting with us over this switch could be here before us, or after us."

"Is there any way to find out?" asked Lucie, unsure of whether or not she really wanted to know the answer.

"I think there might be. And you'll be pleased to know it's so incredibly simple I can do it with the sonic screwdriver."

"You need to find a new name for that thing. It's clearly come a long way since the last time it undid a screw."

The Doctor fine-tuned the sonic for this simple but precise operation.

"I believe that this entire world is just slightly out of synch with the rest of reality. It has its own time but it occupies our space. It's like infinity and finiteness both inhabit this place at the same time."

"So what are you doing now?"

"Pocket universes operate on a different vibration to our own. If I can create a simple alternating sonic frequency I may be able to stabilise a small pocket of time and give us a window into the past - or perhaps the future - which may just give us an idea of what happened here."

Setting the screwdriver down upon the machine's console, the Doctor stepped back and waited to see if he was correct.

* * *

It looked like a window in the dark - something you could look through and see beyond, but if you focused your eyes correctly then all you could see was yourself.

As the Doctor had talked over his theories of this perplexing planet with Amy and Rory listening, an unearthly manifestation had appeared before them. Like a tear in reality, light had poured into the empty space in front of them as if through a crack, opening into a glimmering hole. At first, they could see nothing through it from the angle they were seeing it from. And then the Doctor stepped in front of it and saw a face on the other side that was both familiar and alien to him.

"So it was you all along."

"Sorry, do I know you?" responded the face from long ago.

"You know I usually take my time over these explanations, draw them out a bit. It can be a lot of fun. But on this occasion, I fear that we might not have much time so I'm going to cut to the chase. Doctor, I'm you. I'm your future self. Well, one of them."

"One of them? What number?"

"Eleven. Or twelve. Possibly thirteen, it depends on how you're counting."

"What?"

"Sorry, sorry, no time for tangents, wish I'd never brought that up. Blurting has been a bit of a problem in this regeneration. Look, I think we've been playing tug-o-war with each other. I'm pushing the switch in this time and you're pushing it back again."

"I'm trying to save this planet from dying, so you need to let me push the switch."

"I don't think that will do any good. You see, here the planet is already dead. I've been trying to bring it back to life."

"Well if the planet here is dying, but where you are it's dead, then you must be in our future."

"Not necessarily. Because time isn't going in a straight line here. I think it must be going round in a circle. You and me can't normally exist in the same time-stream, but we've been pulled into it at different points. Anything I do is in your future, and anything you do is in mine. There is no cause and effect - here, they're one and the same thing."

"You know," mused the Eighth Doctor, "this machine - I'm no longer sure it is keeping the planet alive at all. I think it is merely a _measuring_ device - marking where the planet is in its own stream of time. The machine is still running here, but it's slowing down because the planet is winding down..."

"And here it's dead because the planet is dead. Yes, I think you could be right!" The Eleventh Doctor's eyes widened. "Whoever built this machine already knew about the cyclical nature of time here and they just wanted something that would indicate whatever stage of its lifecycle it was in. Like a sundial, but for time."

"So what do we do?"

"Something you won't like."

"How do you know I won't like it?"

"Because I don't like it. And I'm you. It goes against everything we vowed to do as a doctor. But it's the right thing to do."

The Doctor from the past nodded in agreement. "We have to do nothing. We have to let the planet die."

* * *

The Doctor had been right - the connection to his past self had not stayed open for long, and their conversation had ended abruptly. The walk back to the TARDIS was mostly silent. Amy and Rory had plenty of questions about what they'd just witnessed - the Doctor talking to his own past self - but the encounter had clearly had a profound effect on him, and they thought it best to leave him with his thoughts for the moment.

As the TARDIS came into view, Amy broke the silence.

"So, we couldn't help the planet in the end?"

"In the end, no," sighed the Doctor contemplatively. "But only because there is no end for this planet."

The Doctor stopped walking suddenly, bent down for a moment, and then turned to Amy. Moving closer to her, he threaded the tiny flower he had just picked into the buttonhole of her jacket.

"I'm still not sure I understand."

"Time here is in a perpetual loop. Life begins here, it lives, thrives, and survives… and then it dies. But then, thanks to some kind of irregularity in time that I can't explain, it begins again. It's already happening. Life is starting over here."

Amy looked at the flower in her buttonhole. It was small and undeveloped - its petals had not yet fully opened, and yet it was the most beautiful thing on this planet, not least because it stood out among the still barren terrain, but because it may just have been the only - the first - living thing on the planet, and that in itself gave it beauty.

The Doctor disappeared into the TARDIS, leaving Amy and Rory alone for a moment.

"You know,'' began Rory, "when you think about it, what happens here isn't really so different from anywhere else."

"How do you mean?"

"Well… here, for life to begin again, the old life has to end. But that's the case everywhere. New life springs from old. Every winter, flowers die back - but then they return in the spring. When you see a new flower growing at springtime, it's both the old flower reborn and a completely new flower at the same time."

Amy thought about the wise words her husband had given her, and about the thing that she had been trying to push out of her thoughts. As they entered the TARDIS, Rory headed back to their quarters. The Doctor was busying himself on the bridge, but it was clear he was deep in thought too.

"I'll catch you up in a moment," Amy called to Rory. He nodded at her and smiled before disappearing into the interiors of the TARDIS.

"You okay, Doctor?"

"Me? Silly old me? I'm fine."

"Must be a bit of a shock, seeing yourself."

"It's happened a few times now, but I wouldn't say you ever get used to it. It's sort of… poignant."

The Doctor began to pace around the console as he often did when building up to saying something profound.

"Seeing my own past - or my future for that matter - is a reminder that old life eventually has to make way for the new. Like this entire planet, really."

"Rory just said exactly the same thing."

"Yes, well… he's a very smart man your husband. He must be. He held onto you."

Amy looked at the floor. Rory was wonderful. She knew this anyway, but being reminded of the fact just made her feel even more guilty for feeling guilty the way that she did.

"I think,'' the Doctor continued to muse, "that families are a lot like this planet too."

"Why are you suddenly talking about families?" snapped Amy defensively.

"I'm not the only perceptive man around here," the Doctor responded with a smile. "You see, a family isn't just something that exists in one place and at one time. A family is something that reaches far into both the past and the future. It's this gigantic thing that just keeps growing in all directions. The name that you bear isn't just your father's name - it's your father's father's name, and his father's before that. And the family that you have now with Rory isn't a replacement for the family you have with your parents, it's just an extension of it - one that will reach for generations into the future."

Amy looked up at this incredible man that she had come to know. "How did you know that I needed to hear this?"

"Because we all need to hear it. When you think about it, human beings are one gigantic family, they just don't always like to admit it. You're all connected, sharing the same Earth, breathing the same air. You're this one living breathing whole, constantly being renewed, with an amazing legacy behind you but infinite possibilities lying ahead of you."

The Doctor's words resonated with Amy. She did indeed have an amazing family, both past and present, and maybe even future too, but that part of her story lay ahead.


End file.
